An Unexpected Visitor
by seemeinacrown
Summary: Aaaand it looks like Sherlock might have been a teen dad (oops! shhh, don't tell anyone, it's a secret). Not too mushy, not too cliche (I desperately hope), just nice long-lost father/daughter encounters, Sherlock Holmes style. And of course, it wouldn't be complete without John reffing the whole thing.
1. Chapter 1

The phone rang.

"John-," Sherlock started, but he hardly needed to open his mouth.

"Don't worry, it's quite alright, I've got it," John quipped, rolling his eyes as he stood. He picked up the phone. "Hello?"

"Hi—um, hello….who is this?"

"John Watson…Dr. John Watson, and, uh, yourself?"

"Um, Mary—I must've got the wrong number then, I'm sorry-."

"Who are you looking for? I've, uh, got a flatmate."

"Oh, um…do you know the name Sherlock Holmes? I mean, of course you've probably got the name from the papers, but-."

"No, no, yes, he's here. Would you like me to get him for you-?" John looked at Sherlock and watched his eyebrow twitch up at the mention of his name.

"No! No, no, sorry, that's fine. I just—do you think I might be able to stop by, later, tonight, or maybe tomorrow?"

"Well yeah, tonight might be better…what do you need?"

"I…just wanted to see him, that's all. So, soon, is that alright then?"

"Yeah, sure, that's fine," John replied, a little perplexed. "See you soon then."

"Alright. Thank you! Goodbye." The line clicked.

"Who was that?" Sherlock was absorbed in a book again.

"A woman—girl, by the sounds of it. Named Mary? Said she wanted to see you?"

Sherlock's dangling hand tensed for a moment, hardly noticeably, and then went limp again. "Unexpected. I suppose I don't know her?"

John decided against trying to grill Sherlock about his slight reaction and nodded. "I suppose you don't."

"Fine then. Don't let her bore me if she comes."

Two hours later there came a timid knock on the door.

"Come in-!" Sherlock called, not looking up from his work on the kitchen table, while John desperately cut him off, calling, "No, I've got it, don't worry-."

He opened the door and looked ever so slightly down on a girl, maybe around twenty, standing before him. She had black hair back in a ponytail that looked slightly disarrayed. He took in the rest of her. Red jumper, nicely fitting though cheap looking jeans, slippers—moccasins—on her feet. She was clutching a purse at her side for dear life and was trying a smile that seemed, to John, painfully close to the timid one Molly always put on around Sherlock. She stuck a hand out.

"Mary-," she managed, as John composed himself and took her hand, smiling back. "Mary Dawson. And-?"

"John, John Watson. Please, please, come inside."

With tight shoulders, the girl stepped in the flat, while John shut the door over her head. He looked at her as she surveyed the room apprehensively.

"Please, take a seat if you like—or if you'd rather not-."

"Oh, I'm fine, thank you though." She smiled weakly again.

"Right." John tried to smile warmly again, hoping to make up for the lack of hospitality Sherlock was hopelessly bound to display in the near future. "Would you like some tea?"

"That, that would be great. Don't trouble yourself, though, it's just a short-."

"No, it's no trouble at all." John waved her off. "So, you wanted to see Sherlock, then?"

"Is that alright? Is he busy? If so, I can just stop by later-."

Both John and Sherlock replied "No, let me just get him from the kitchen-," and "Terribly so," respectively, at the same time, caused both Mary and John to blush.

"Don't mind him," John covered. "Let me get him, I'll be back in a moment. Again-," he gestured towards the seats and couch, though the girl made no move to sit herself down. He walked briskly into the kitchen.

"What was the idea of that?" he whispered harshly, setting a kettle on the stove. "She's here to see you. So go see her."

"First of all, not only did I not agree to this visit, I have no intention of wasting time in the middle of an experiment on a girl that I don't even know, that no doubt has nothing interesting to discuss, and no less that-."

"Sherlock! Please, for goodness' sake, just go out and have a heart once in your sorry life. She's out there looking half scared to death!"

With a sigh and a furious glance towards his friend, Sherlock stood up, pointedly straightened his suit jacket, and stepped out into the living room, pulling a somewhat cordial look at the girl standing in the living room. When he entered, she seemed suddenly intimidated—expectedly—and as though she wanted desperately to look to the floor for comfort but couldn't leave the eyes of the new subject of her attention.

"Who—who are you?" Even from the kitchen, John could sense the strain in Sherlock's voice as he tried, bless his soul, not to scare the girl half to death with his regular forcefulness. He leaned back on the fridge and watched the kettle heat, listening to the other room.

"Mary..uh, Dawson?"

"Dawson?" John heard Sherlock choke a bit on the word.

"Uh yes…" Pause. "An—Ann Dawson, she was my mother?" She ended again in a tone that betrayed her doubt in herself.

No word was uttered for minutes in the other room. John stayed in the kitchen until the kettle whistled, then removed it and tentatively stepped into the room.

Sherlock and Mary were standing staring at each other, Sherlock stone and Mary shifting on her feet, her eyes darting everywhere, unsure of whether to look at the floor or the man in front of her. When John entered, she gratefully locked her eyes on him.

"Everything alright, then?" John croaked. It was silent.

"Oh." Sherlock barely opened his mouth to emit the syllable, and John looked at him.

"Sherlock?"

"She….she."

Mary looked down and John's eyebrows furrowed. "What about her, Sherlock?"

"She's…my…daughter."

"Oh."


	2. Chapter 2

It had taken several unsuccessful tries before John was finally able to drag Sherlock into the kitchen by the coat sleeve, all the while delivering polite apologies to Mary, who stood red-faced in the same spot she had been for the past fifteen minutes.

John steered Sherlock, who had gone completely stiff-framed by now and totally incapable of his own movement, it seemed, onto a stool in the kitchen and stood in front of him, trying to catch his eyes.

"Sherlock…what…Sherlock, look at me." John snapped, but Sherlock continued to stare blankly past John. John had never seen him so out of sorts. "Sherlock, what is going on?"

"My daughter." Sherlock suddenly looked back at John with a desperate look in his eyes, gesturing back towards the living room. "She—Mary—she's my _daughter_, John, my _daughter_." He stood and looked at John frantically, still repeating himself and pointing in Mary's general direction although she was out of sight.

"Yes Sherlock, I've heard—sit down, you're going to knock something over." He pushed Sherlock back in his seat again, but his knee continued to bounce up and down agitatedly and his eyes darted around the room.

"What is going on, Sherlock?"

"My daughter."

"Yes, I heard Sherlock-." Sherlock suddenly grabbed John's shoulders and looked deeply into his eyes.

"John, my daughter is standing out in the living room waiting to talk to me. What do I do?"

John winced as Sherlock gripped him harder, and his ever perceptive friend released his hold. "Sherlock."

"Yes?"

"Just…tell me how you have a daughter? You—you've said you've never been in a relationship before, _Mycroft_ says you never have…so explain this?"

"…I may have lied."

"Sherlock-!"

"No, no, no!" Sherlock had at least regained himself—at least outwardly-and stood, towering over John, his eyes fierce. "Just stop. I lied for good reason, alright? You didn't need to know, Mycroft didn't need to know…nobody needed to know."

"Sherlock, you have a daughter. That's hardly a trivial matter."

Sherlock looked down. "I know."

John swallowed and bit his lip, trying to inquire with delicacy about the subject. "So…what happened then? Can you tell me?"

"I…yes." The detective began pacing around the kitchen slowly, seeming to look for his thoughts around the room. "I met a girl on holiday; I was 16. Kept it a secret from Mycroft, my family, naturally, and by the time I left to go home she was pregnant." He looked pointedly at John, though his face looked somewhat pained. "It was an accident, of course."

"Well, yes, I would have guessed….so what happened then?"

"I don't know!"

"Sherlock—you don't _know_-?!"

"No, John, I don't!" Sherlock sighed and swallowed. "She told me she would take care of the child, raise it, waved me off, told me to leave, she could manage." Suddenly Sherlock sounded emotional again. "What was I to do? I was leaving, I had made a mistake, a _huge_ mistake, and now I was being denied even the opportunity to make up for it!...Of course I didn't _want _a child then, I was still young, but I didn't want her to be alone, not at all!" Sherlock sat down on a stool opposite from John and held his face in his hands. "I made a terrible mistake John."

"Well Sherlock…I mean…you tried, didn't you? It was an accident, and…"

Sherlock looked up at him, somehow close to tears and cold at the same time. "Don't you ever wonder why I don't like to love?"

"You said it distracts you-."

"Yes, that's true John, but that's not entirely why! I loved somebody once, once, _one single time_, and this is what I got out of it. An illegitimate child, months of guilt that I couldn't share with anyone, and a hardened heart because of it." He tapped the counter with his finger and whispered. "That's why."

John swallowed hard and searched for something to say, but nothing came. Here was his friend, his unemotional and insensitive friend, breaking down in front of him. For good reason, of course, but still, breaking down. What could he do?

"Sherlock, I…"

"What, John?"

"Why don't you go talk to her then? She…she's been waiting for a while."

After a moment and a tentative breath, Sherlock replied. "Yes, I suppose I should."


	3. Chapter 3

Unsteadily, with John nudging him in the back all the way from the kitchen, Sherlock reentered the living room to face Mary. Immediately she opened her mouth.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have called. I know this is causing issues, I'm sorry-."

"No, no." Sherlock shook his head rapidly. "You're fine, you're fine. You—you have a right to come, to come and see your, your father." Mary nodded. "Will you…sit down, then?" John almost smirked at Sherlock's forced but well-meaning manners, but kept it together for his friend's sake.

Mary had apparently found it in herself to finally sit, so she settled on the couch while Sherlock and John took their respective chairs, turning them slightly to face the girl. John might have asked Sherlock if he wanted him to leave, but he knew that Sherlock would need the moral support, not to mention the nudges and looks reminding him to keep the intimidation to a minimum.

"Can you tell me about yourself?" John looked over at Sherlock as the words left his mouth. Sherlock never asked people to speak about themselves, a result of him not caring much about it in the first place and being able to deduce much of it on his own besides that. But for the first time that John had ever heard, the detective seemed, well, sincere in his question, like he really wanted to know. John looked down.

"Well…what exactly do you want to know?"

"Anything. Tell me about yourself, what you like to do, how you've been doing in school, I suppose? I really know nothing about you."

Mary smiled nervously. "Well, I guess you don't. Um…I'm in my first year at uni, but I'm not quite sure yet what I want to do…I like writing, I play the piano…I do like history, but I'm terrible in sciences. I swam for school, and I guess I still do it occasionally, but I'll just run mostly…got a boyfriend, living in a flat on my own…I suppose that's about it."

"How's your mother?" The question shot out quickly, and Mary looked taken aback before recovering quickly.

"She's alright. Got married a few years back…he's a nice guy. I'm not too close to him, but she likes him well enough—well I mean, obviously, they're married-, got a little brother and sister she had with a boyfriend a while back, but they split; they're 12 and 10. She's just been working for an insurance company, doing pretty well…me and her haven't been getting on too well lately, we haven't spoken for a few months…well, except when I asked her about you, 'cause I was just getting curious, you know?" Sherlock looked deeply at Mary for a moment.

"What did she say then?"

"When?"

"When you asked her about me."

"Well, you know, I knew she'd had me when she was young, but she never really talked much about you, and you know, I just got to thinking that maybe I'd like to know you, maybe meet you before I got too much older, just so…so I didn't have to go my whole life without meeting my dad. So I rang her, and like I said, we hadn't been getting on too well so she wasn't too happy when I called in the first place, and so I asked her about you, and she said she didn't want any part of it but she told me your named and said I could do what I wanted, just to leave her out of it." Mary paused, then continued. "I don't think she hates you, you know. When she said she didn't want to talk to you. She just…I think she just really wanted to move on. She's told me all the time how she regrets having a kid so young, always freaks out every time I get a boyfriend…I know she loves me, but she regrets it. I think she just wants to move on; like I said, she never talked about you. She doesn't blame you, she's never said a bad word about you, she just doesn't want much to do with you, that's all."

Sherlock nodded, as if he'd been expecting as much, which didn't seem too far fetched. It was quiet, and after it seemed that Sherlock was in no mood to inquire any more at the moment, Mary opened her mouth again.

"What about you, then? Can…can you tell me about your life, what you've been up to? Or is that…too personal?"

"Of course it's not too personal." John heard a hint of the regular bothered Sherlock and shot him a look. "I'm a consulting detective. Don't have a 'real' job, I guess you'd say, but I assist Scotland Yard in their investigations...there's nothing I love more than a good case; ask John. I've been living in London for years, but I just moved into this flat with John," he gestured with his head towards his friend, "about a year ago."

"Is he…John…are you two…um." Mary looked apologetically at John and Sherlock.

"No, no, we're not together. Just good flatmates," John offered, looking at Sherlock for confirmation.

"Yes. John is my friend." Sherlock looked at the ceiling. "I haven't found anyone since your mother. John has girlfriends, though."

Mary sat in silence for a while. "No one…since my mother?"

"Yes."

"So you must have really loved her, then." It wasn't a question.

Sherlock looked at Mary questioningly, penetratingly, and then breathed "Yes. So, so much."

Mary nodded, and nothing more was said for a minute or two; they were at a stalemate.

"I guess I should get going, then," she finally said, taking her bag and rising. "I…thank you, for letting me come. It was nice to meet you."

"You're just leaving?" Sherlock didn't stand, but looked at Mary with a puzzled look on his face.

"Well…was there something else I was supposed to do? I…I'm sorry, I didn't think you'd want-."

"Well of course I want to talk to you still. Maybe not now, but I do."

"All…alright, then. That would be nice."

Again, they stayed in silence.

"Mary, I want you to come visit again."

"I will."

"Often."

"Alright."

"Mary."

"Yes?"

"You mean a lot to me."

Mary looked quietly surprised. "I mean a lot to you? But you've only just met me."

"But you're my daughter."

"Well, yes-."

"I…I have only ever allowed myself to love one person, and that was your mother, and the way things turned out between us is why I never loved again, do you understand? And I've only ever told John that, and just when you came. And I don't want you to feel bad because of that; obviously it wasn't your fault. But you are my daughter, and I made you, and if I am going to ever love anybody again it is going to be you." Sherlock paused, but was entirely composed. "I've never had much in the way of family, and maybe you could change that. I'm a terrible host, a bothersome flatmate-," John kept from attesting to that, "—and downright insensitive, so I've heard, but I'm not going to let that keep me from having a daughter, and if I must prove everyone I know wrong by doing so, so it is."

John looked at Sherlock in shock, never having heard a monologue of that magnitude of feeling ever come out of his flatmate's mouth, and Mary seemed to recognize that this was a rare occurrence too, given the look on her face. Tears were starting to come to her eyes, too.

"Thank you."

Sherlock stood abruptly and walked over to Mary to show her out. "See you soon, I suppose?"

And then Mary wrapped her arms around Sherlock's torso, squeezing him tightly and briefly, before Sherlock had time to react. "Yes. I'll be back, I promise. Goodnight, then."

She stepped back out into the hall and down the stairs, and Sherlock watched first out his door and then out the window as she walked away.

"Sherlock, I…," John began.

"Good?" Sherlock didn't look up from the window.

"Yes. Good," John nodded, and walked back into the kitchen. So maybe his flatmate did have a heart after all, and a fairly good one at that.


	4. Chapter 4

And then came the visits, and then came the family.

Every other weekend, in came Mary, in came her husband John, in came the confusion every time someone called 'John!' and two men turned to look, in came the smiles that followed the mix-ups.

Sometimes trailing behind Mary moodily, sometimes in her arms, sometimes bounding up the stairs a flight ahead of their parents, running, walking, shuffling, came the kids, all four of them, as they came to visit Grandpa Sherlock. In they came.

And oh, how Sherlock loved them dearly.

"Granddad, granda, look, look!" Billy bounded into the same flat that his mother had stepped into for the first time twenty years prior. "Look what I found!" He lifted himself up into his grandfather's arms as the older man put down his paper and smiled welcomingly.

"What is it?"

The child held up a feather for inspection. "Found it on the street. Look, it's black."

"Oh, I like it. Good find." Sherlock nodded at the young boy. "Go put it in the kitchen, then we'll look at it later."

"Hi, granddad." Sherlock looked up to see his young granddaughter Danni lean forward to hug him and kiss his cheek.

"Danni, you've grown," Sherlock teased, surveying her height.

"No I haven't, granddad." She laughed.

"No, I'm sure you have. You can't fool me."

"Well maybe you're just shrinking," Danni threw at Sherlock, smiling and running into the kitchen as Sherlock raised his eyebrows at her.

"Not a chance!" he called. He lifted himself up out of his chair before anyone else could get to him. Mary and John were still walking into the door, Mary holding a toddler and John carrying another child on his back, who promptly jumped to the ground once they were inside.

"Where's Billy?" she asked, bounding up to her granddad.

"Evie! Say hi to your granddad first, silly," Mary called, nudging her towards Sherlock.

"Yeah, I _know_ mum, I was just asking first. Hi, granddad."

"Well hello to you too." He kissed the girl on the head. "Billy's in the kitchen."

"Can I have a biscuit?"

"Of course you can, just don't make a mess that you can't clean up yourself, and give some to the others."

"Alright," Evie huffed, off to the kitchen.

Mary looked at Sherlock apologetically and Sherlock laughed, taking the toddler from her arms. "Hello, Mary."

"Hi, dad." She gave him a quick half hug before sitting on the couch. "I'm exhausted, I tell you."

"Hello, John." Sherlock offered his hand to his son-in-law, who shook it, smiling.

"Good to see you again." He settled on the couch next to his wife as Sherlock sat back in his old chair, baby Maura on his lap and playing with his shirt collar.

"So, how's it been then?" Mary asked, leaning on John's arm.

"Oh, you know, same old things. Trying to keep myself busy, seeing as I'm a little old to be chasing criminals around the city anymore."

Mary laughed at the hint of sourness in her father's voice. "Oh no, we don't need that. Keep yourself out of trouble, Sherlock Holmes." Little shouts suddenly erupted from the kitchen, and Mary sighed. "Better go get the little animals, then." She walked out, leaving Sherlock and son-in-law John in a silence, but a comfortable and familiar one. Suddenly the kids all ran in from the kitchen.

"When's Uncle John coming?" demanded Evie, climbing on the arm of Sherlock's chair.

"He called this morning, said he and Sarah would be stopping by while you lot are here, so don't worry," Sherlock offered, making faces at Maura, who giggled.

"Granddad, can we watch telly?" Sherlock turned to the sound of Billy's voice.

"Help yourself."

Cries of 'it's my turn to pick!' sailed over the room, and while John picked up a paper to read, Sherlock felt Mary plant a kiss on his check and drape her arms around her next.

"Dad?"

"Yes, Mary."

"You are a _good_ man, you know that?"

"You think so, then?"

"I know so."

Sherlock smiled up at her. "I love you."

"I love you too, dad."


End file.
